The restrictions had prompted widespread online complaints, but mostly from locals about challenges in getting access to food or medical care. On Wednesday, anger spread nationwide, with social-media expressions of outrage in response to a video showing a woman sitting outside a hospital, with a pool of blood at her feet. In the one-minute video, people identifying themselves as family members describe how the woman was kept waiting outside the hospital for two hours, allegedly because her most recent Covid-19 test was a couple of hours too old. By the time she was admitted, her unborn baby had died.

The incident seems to have marked a turning point in the public response to some of the most stringent lockdown measures in China, which has espoused a strategy of stamping out the virus wherever it emerges. It prompted a quick response from Xi’an authorities, which said hospitals shouldn’t turn away patients needing urgent attention, including pregnant women, in the name of Covid-19 prevention…

By Thursday morning in China, the video had been watched 51 million times. Many who commented said they have in the past defended Xi’an’s lockdown measures, but had changed their minds after the woman’s account of losing her baby.

“This mother suffered so much…waiting in the cold only to lose her child. Feel suffocated even thinking about it,” said one comment on the Twitter -like Weibo platform that drew nearly a quarter-million likes.

“This is so infuriating. The death rate of Covid-19 is dropping, while the costs of ‘zero tolerance’ are rising,” said another comment.